"The paper is perhaps 5 per cent empirical information and 95 per cent speculation, some of it possibly tainted by wishful thinking. The excuse for building an elaborate structure on such a shaky foundation is a deep interest in the subject and a wish to share it with members of the Association. The formal and no less genuine excuse is that the subject is central to much of economic analysis and thinking; that our knowledge of it is inadequate; that a more cogent view of the whole field may help channel our interests and work in intellectually profitable directions; that speculation is an effective way of presenting a broad view of the field; and that so long as it is recognized as a collection of hunches calling for further investigation rather than a set of fully tested conclusions, little harm and much good may result"
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Academics from the United StatesJews from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesNobel laureates in EconomicsPeople from Belarus
Original Language: English
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simon_Kuznets
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Simon Kuznets
Simon Smith Kuznets (April 30, 1901 – July 8, 1985) was a Belarusian-American economist, statistician, demographer, and economic historian who won the 1971 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development."
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